5 Things For SMEs To Know About Video Marketing

We recently gave a talk for Connect-ED to help our fellow SMEs learn about video marketing. Read on for a summary…

How Much Will Does Video Production Cost?

A wide variety of factors influence the cost of video production, including the video format, idea/script and the resources required (i.e. actors, locations).

The cost of producing video content has dropped in the last decade.

A variety of factors, including the growth of digital media and the democratisation of filmmaking tools, have been key to this. There is an increasing awareness of the value of continuous video content. Social media has led to an explosion in video production demand and this type of work typically costs less compared to production for TV.

Why Is Using Video Marketing Important?

Video is considered to be one of the most effective marketing tools. More than 93% of marketers are actively using video and more than 50% believe video marketing results in the best return on investment.

Video provides a richer and more engaging user experience than text. The vast majority of people are using it to satisfy their entertainment and informational needs.

Businesses often perceive video as an expense but we disagree with that. It is an investment. A finished video is an asset for your business.

There are endless lists and blogs full of statistics that support the importance of using video marketing. We know because we read pretty much every single one during our market research. We took a few of our favourites and made an explainer video for publishing across social media as part of our own marketing plan.

Self-producing a piece of content like that wasn’t expensive for us and that particular video helped us land a series of high value commissions. The ROI was over 1000%.

What Video Marketing Formats Are There?

There are a variety of video marketing formats available. Both B2B and B2C should consider video, but may consider different formats. These are the names and descriptions we use but they are not universal. There are no industry standards. You might see or hear them called different things elsewhere.

A ‘brand film’ is the most universal format – it’s typically 2-5 min long and can be used to tell the story of your company, of the founders and show people what your business is all about.

It can also work well for presenting products, services or events. Transparency and uniqueness are highly valuable charactertistics for businesses. Your customers want to know about your company culture. People buy from the brands they like and seeing who is behind the business can be beneficial. This is one of the key advantages that making a brand film boasts.

A ‘commercial’ is 30-90 seconds long and usually promotes a product or a service.

They were traditionally used on TV, but now used across digital platforms such as YouTube and social media. It requires a creative concept and is typically more expensive to execute than a brand film. However, it’s not true that you can only make a commercial if you have tens of thousands to invest.

Smaller formats like animated ‘explainer’ videos are great for demonstrating a complex product or service and making information easier to digest.

A ‘micro-promo’ is a video that is 15 seconds or less that is excellent for building brand awareness on social media, especially Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Other formats include behind the scenes, virtual tour, 360-video.

How Will You Use The Video?

Social media is where we focus a lot of our attention. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram all allow for native uploading and hosting. LinkedIn have also began making video central to their offering. Video captures and retains a person’s attention more effectively than static media or text. So if you want to be successful on social media, where you have to compete for and win your audience with engaging content, video can be the perfect tool.

Using social media, your content can be promoted and targeted to reach highly specific groups or even individuals.

An equally important place to use video is on your website. Your website content should be consumable in a short amount of time, or your website could suffer from a high bounce rate. Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the landing page.

Finally, publishing videos in blogs and emails have shown impressive results. Apparently including a video in an email leads to an increased click through rate of 200-300%.

What Makes A Good Video?

We believe that a good video has a strong idea or narrative and the appropriate level of production value.

You can shoot a video with a smartphone, but this is only really appropriate for live streaming, behind the scenes and general social media posts. If you want to tell your company’s story or advertise your new product, not having the appropriate level of production value could damage your brand.

Wait until you can make this investment rather than making something with the inappropriate level of quality.

A good video is one that achieves or exceeds the desired goals outlined at the beginning of the project. We start planning every project by finding out what the client’s goals are and decide on a format and create a concept following that.